


What Happened to Everyone?

by I_Skavinsky_Skavar



Series: Steve Rogers in the 21st Century [1]
Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Skavinsky_Skavar/pseuds/I_Skavinsky_Skavar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months into living in the present, a despondent Steve Rogers ventures out in the world to seek out his last remaining friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happened to Everyone?

Phil Coulson stood looking at the field of white grave markers, seeming without end, feeling a strong sense of reverence. Daniel Coulson, his grandfather, and Jason Coulson, his uncle, were both buried there, as was, in a way, the man he was presently minding.

Ten feat away, the man in a black coat stood gazing at a grave marker that read;

 _STEVEN_

 _ROGERS_   
__

_CPT_

 _US_   
_ARMY_

 _WORLD WAR II_

 _JUL 4 1918_

 _MAR 2 1945_

 _DSC & 2 OLC_

 _SS & OLC - PH_

 

He'd been discovered two months ago, at a time Coulson was tending to SHIELD business in India. By the time it was resolved and he'd flown back to headquarters, the 1940's recovery room mock-up had been constructed and the revived Rogers was revived. The plan was to subliminally inform him as to how much time had passed over a period of days. It was a good plan in Coulson's estimation, thought of by SHIELD's top psychiatrist.

It was a shame that Dr. Fennhoff wasn't a baseball fan, as Rogers ended up finding things out the hard way. He escaped into the streets, making it as far as Times Square when SHIELD caught up with him. It was one of the Division's most visible excursions to date, and involved Colonel Fury himself.

It wasn't as catastrophic as it could have been. Rogers took the news well and agreed to be take back to headquarters, though he said something strange, four words that had baffled the agents on the scene; "I had a date."

The Colonel pointedly forbade them from pressing the matter if Rogers was reluctant to discuss it. Coulson suspected that Fury knew, like he did everything else, but choose to withhold the information for reasons clear to no one.

Since then, Rogers remained in the facility with his own consent. Everyday he endured a battery of tests that tested the limits of his body and mind. What was left of the day he spent reading history books and watching video documentaries covering the span of the past seventy years, or sparing with trainers, many of whom were former SEALSs or Rangers Drill Instructors who he managed to surprise by keeping up with them, even picking up the moves they used with ease. While most had heard of the legend of Captain America, they now began to experience it, feeling the same awe he inspired in their grandfathers.

For the most part, though, he kept to himself. On the occasion where he talked to someone else, he did so out of politeness when someone else initiated the conversation.

Yesterday was the day he announced to Fury that he was ready to go out into the world for a little while. Fury suggested someone he thought he'd like to meet; an old friend who'd survived the years. But first Rogers had another visit in mind, one morbid in nature; he wanted to see where he was 'buried'.

"Alright." Said Rogers eventually, "I've seen it."

"Would you like to leave, sir?"

"Yeah…" said Rogers then paused, "I suppose they're gonna take that thing down?"

"When your…" answered Coulson, pausing as he looked for the right word, "Return is made public, most likely."

Coulson glanced at another member of the security detail standing nearby and gave her a nod. She in turn spoke into her ear-piece, informing the rest that Captain Rogers was on his way out.

 

 

 

 

Hours later, Rogers and Coulson were in one of SHIELD's black sedans as it made its way through the streets of Philadelphia. Rogers remained his stoic self for the entire drive, only once did he speak, when he asked,

"How old is he by now?"

"He's ninety-three, sir." Said Coulson, glad he had spoken. He expected him to open up and for the conversation to continue, but he remained silent until it pulled up in front of a house in Cedar Park.

It was a two-story house built in brick and surrounded by a barren, snow-covered yard. Had Rogers been architecturally inclined, he might have recognized it as a Queen Anne styled house.

"We'll wait here." Said Coulson.

"There's no need." Said Rogers, "Go get some lunch."

"Those are the Colonel's orders."

"Alright." Rogers said simply, "It'll be some time, though."

"You take all the time you want, sir."

"Thank you."

Rogers stepped out the car and straightened his suit. It was a navy blue, two button suit he wore over a cornflower blue shirt and a maroon tie. It was tailor-made overnight by SHIELD's on-staff tailor, which Rogers did not believe was an actual job someone could have in a government agency.

He'd been offered the option of the Army's new class A's; a blue uniform and a tan beret, but it was so different from what he was used to that he preferred the similarly-colored suit. He closed the car door behind him and walked to the front door where he rang the doorbell, thinking why anyone ever thought _'Army Green'_ wasn't a good enough color.

A short while later, a young woman answered. She was of her mid-twenties, similar to the age Rogers appeared to be, with raven black hair and a contrastingly fair complexion. She wore a black hooded sweater jacket and had several metal studs embedded into the upper part of her ear, which he found, while bizarre, oddly appealing.

"Can I help you?" she said suspiciously.

"I'm Michael Keane." Said Rogers, using the pseudonym he was instructed to use for the time being, "Professor Jones is expecting me."

"Oh… You're Mr. Keane?" she said in a surprised tone, "Didn't expect someone so… Young."

She chuckled, and he forced himself to smile.

"Come on in, Proffesor Jones has been waiting for you."

"Thank you."

 

 

Jones had been waiting in his plush leather chair at the corner of his study by the standing lamp, reading a book with his glasses on, when Rogers and his live-in nurse entered the room.

"Oh, did the door bell ring?" he said, "I didn't hear it."

Rogers recognized the voice despite the considerable gravel. He recognized little else, as the man sitting before him was on the frail side, though he hadn't lost too much height, and his hairline had receded to the back of his head and grown white. Much of his facial features were obscured by the gray and white beard he sported.

The nurse went to his side to help him stand up, and handed him his quad cane.

"This is Mr. Keane to see you."

"Yes… Of course."

On his feet and his left hand clutching his cane, he extended the other for a handshake.

"It is _so_ good to finally see you again, sir." He said.

Rogers was impressed by how calm he acted, and briefly wondered if his old age affected his mental capacities and that he did not actually know who he was. He tried his best to contain his emotion and sound as composed as he could.

"Likewise, Proffesor Jones." He said as he shook his hand. It was a strong, firm hand that shook his, and Rogers knew Jones was well aware of who stood before him.

"Noreen, you can have the evening off." Said Jones as he let go.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. Give my regards to Rosa."

Noreen gathered a few of her items and bade the two goodbye while they were making small talk. As soon as the door closed, Jones stopped talking, allowed a look of anguish to fill his features and raised his arms in a gesture Rogers understood and reciprocated.

The two old soldiers embraced for the better part of a minute, saying nothing as a tear silently flowed down Jones' ragged cheek.

"Damn it, Steve, why didn't they find you a whole lot sooner?"

 

 

 

Minutes later, the two sat on the couch, listening to an old scratchy Opera record with drinks in their hands.

"What did they tell you about what happened after you disappeared?" asked Jones, nursing his glass of red wine.

Rogers sighed and took a drink of his scotch.

"They brought me up to speed. They told me the Red Army was the first into Berlin, and that the war in the Pacific was over a few months later. I read about the Cold War, Vietnam and Nine-Eleven… All that stuff's so heady, it was gonna take a while to get my head around it. But about us? Our guys? They didn't tell me anything."

"Didn't you ask?"

"No. I was scared to. I guess I couldn't handle finding out everybody was dead." Said Rogers, taking another drink. "So what happened to everybody?"

"Well, after you disappeared, Falsworth took over command of the commandos. We were joined by a couple of guys; Pinky Pinkerton, a Limey, and Izzy Cohen, from the Bronx. Even after VE-Day, we hunted down rogue pockets of Hydra troops who were trying to carry on Schmidt's _vision_. We captured a couple of war criminals trying to escape to South America, but by then we were too damn tired. We had our points; so me, Morita and Frenchie decided to go home.

"Dernier went back to his wife and kid in Marseilles. I'm sad to say I let more than a few years go by before I decided to look him up, because when I did it was too late. He'd died of a heart attack."

"Morita went back to Fresno. He got married that year, and I stood as his best man. He became a lawyer, went into politics and served four terms in Congress as a Democrat. I delivered his eulogy ten years ago.

"Myself, I went back to school. First at Howard, then later at the Sorbonne. I never did shake my fondness for the mademoiselles, you see.

"The SSR was decommissioned in early 1946. They then put Philips in command of the 107th, then gave him one-star and made him Deputy Commander of the division. Eventually, he became one of Truman's advisers on arms technology, a job he kept for the next two administrations.

"In the sixties, I started hearing from Philips and Dugan again. Dugan stayed with the Army and joined the Rangers, He fought in Korea and then joined the CIA. I had studied politics and military history, I had written a couple of books, and I was teaching in a little University in England. They brought me back in contact with Howard Stark.

"He'd gotten even richer by then. The two of us became off the book consultants on foreign weapons programs. What the four of us had was a lot like the SSR, we just weren't the dumb bunch of kids running off to do missions, and we had a new enemy we were trying to stop from amassing an arsenal; the Soviets.

"With Philips in the Pentagon, Dugan in the CIA, Stark in the arms industry, and me providing senior intelligence analysis, we started to build something."

"SHIELD."

"Exactly." Said Jones, "It took some doing, but we got there. In 1973, the Strategic Hazard Intelligence, Enforcement and Logistics Division was inaugurated. The name changed a bit over the years.

"General Philips just barely missed seeing it happen, so Dugan stepped up to the big leagues as SHIELD's first director. He hung your old  USO shield that the Red Skull dented in his office. It's still there.

"SHIELD was much smaller then, though. And underfunded. So we had to make up for it by proving we could do the job the CIA couldn't; which meant thinking outside the box, leverage human assets against all else. So when the time came to put together the only covert operations task force we could afford, we had come down to two young men who could lead them.

"Both were natural born killers, expertly trained warriors who'd grown their teeth fighting in Vietnam. Our first choice was a Marine Corps Captain who was the lone survivor of a complete massacre of a battle near the Cambodian border. He was a family man, so he turned us down, said he was happy to now train another bunch of idiots to get themselves killed over nothing.

"So we went to our backup candidate. A Green Beret Lieutenant who wasn't our first choice because he'd lost an eye during the battle of Kham Duc."

"Nick Fury?"

"The one and only."

"He asked me to give you his regards."

"I tell you, after all the things I've seen that man do, and how far he's made it, I shudder to think what would've happened if the Marine had said yes. The world would've been different, I tell you."

"For the worse, _right_?"

"Sure." Jones said, and Rogers was a little unnerved by the hint of hesitation he spoke in.

"After that, SHIELD grew. We got more agents, more bases and more authority, even as its founders passed away. When Philips died, we were in serious risk of being shut down. When Dugan and Stark passed away in 1991, there was no stopping it."

"How did they go?"

"After a lifetime of foreign secret services trying to assassinate him, Dugan ended up passing away in his sleep. Howard Stark was killed in a car crash when a drunk driver hit him head-on one night.

"Howard had a son, Anthony. He was kidnapped a few months ago in Afghanistan, but he was recently rescued. Escaped on his own, actually. I've met him a few times, he's a lot like his old man, for better or worse. You could… I don't know. I think he'd like to meet you."

Rogers bowed his head.

"Remember our time in France, Gabe?"

"Of course." Said Jones. Rogers' odd change in the conversation puzzled him.

"Remember you teaching me about all the… Intricacies of understanding women? And then when I tried to tell you who it was I was interested in, you said everyone who knew me, and her, didn't need to be told about it, 'cause it's too obvious… You know what's been tearing me up, Gabe, you know what I couldn't muster up the guts to ask."

Jones sighed.

"Steve…"

"Tell me; what happened to Peggy?" asked Rogers, a faint tremble in his voice.

"She…"

Jones loathed saying what came next. He waned to lie, to spare his old friend and CO any further trauma. In the end, he respected him too much to do that, so he told him the truth.

"She got married in 1949… To Jim Falsworth."

"Falsworth?" Rogers asked, his eyes wide with shock.

"After the war, they worked for British intelligence together."

Rogers hung his head and balled his fists as they rested on his knees.

"I got married too, Cap." Said Jones, "Twice. I loved Aisha and Susan both so dearly. Both of them died on me. I was broken each time, but the thing is… A man tends to put himself back together after a while. It could drive you crazy, good memories can just be reminder that they're over and gone, but you can't let it destroy you. A man forgets about the loss, and just keeps remembering that, for some time at least, he had something precious. Something beautiful"

Rogers finished his drink and got up silently, walking to the far wall which was adorned with framed photographs and newspaper clippings. He scanned them all, realizing the significance of some, but not others. Some depicted faces he knew, changed by time to some degree or another.

"When you were gone we all mourned you, Bucky too. It was tough on all of us; me, Peggy, Falsworth. Hell, even Philips. We were devastated, but in time we moved on. We found new lives, we found new loves… Doesn't make what any of us had mean any less. Knowing you, it made my life better. Hell, knowing each other, it made all our lives better. We never forgot you, Steve, not for one day. And neither did she."

In the center of the wall was a picture taken at a US Army Camp in Northern Italy, in early November 1943, depicting some four-hundred escaped prisoners of war. Bellow it was a picture bearing the inscription _'The Hamptons – New Year's Eve 1966'_.

It depicted a group of people in their late forties and early fifties, among them was Peggy, still radiant at a time that would be a hair over twenty years after he'd last seen her, looking glad and full of life. Around the table he recognized Howard Stark, Dugan, Morita, Jones and Falsworth. Some were a little fatter, others a little balder, each markedly different yet essentially the same as he'd known them. A bunch of war buddies getting together for some champagne and to ring in the New Year. Of note, there were three empty seats around the table, each with a full glass of champagne before them; a tribute to absent friends.

"Did you stay friends with them?"

"Steve…"

"Tell me." Steve demanded shortly.

"Yes. I stayed friends with them."

Rogers was silent for a short while.

"Were they happy?"

"Yes. They were."

"Kids?"

"They had a son and a daughter. Brian and Jacquelina."

For a moment Rogers was silent before he looked back at him, his expression softened.

"Good." He said.

Jones knew it was at least mostly genuine, and felt a modicum of shame for ever considering he'd take the news any way other than with grace and honor after the initial shock.

"God, that's really good to hear." Said Rogers as he took back his seat. He was silent again, but it was a relieved silence. Jones thought it might've been a trick of the light, or his eye-sight going, but he thought he saw his friend smile for a second.

"Isn't there anything else you want to know?"

"The only thing I want to know is…Are you so old and decrepit you can't handle another drink?"

Jones smiled faintly at the poor attempt at levity, sympathetic yet admiring.

"Pour us a couple, boss, and we'll see how it goes down."

**Author's Note:**

> The unnamed Marine Corps Captain is meant to be Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, particularly the version appearing in The Punisher MAX series by Garth Ennis.


End file.
